Moving IRL story around IoG

[club]

Hard to believe this wasnt posted, as it was written in 2001, but the search didn't find any mention of it here. So I'll risk posting it.

At first it seems to drone on and I skipped ahead to where IoG came in, but I urge you to not do the same, to experience the story proper. Im usually pretty emotionally dead inside, but it really moved me for some reason.

http://www.progressiveboink.com/archive/illusionofgaia.htm

[Mantaray]

Aw, looks like it's not there anymore

I did read a story once about how someone's cousin or brother's life went downhill after they quit playing when they couldn't beat the vampires. was that the story you were trying to post? It was the first thing that came to mind.

[club]

Ah yea, that was the one. Guess Im not the first one to find it after all.

What a weird sequence of events. That site has been up since 2001 and then goes down shortly before you clicked the link.

Found a mirror of the story here, for those unfamiliar:
http://www.whatever-dude.com/posts/110.shtml

[Blade]

that was a heartwarming read. I'm glad people all over the world connect to video games emotionally like I do.

[ker-plop]

That was... incredibly deep. I don't know what else to say.

[geekgirl101]

Being determined to defeat the boss in his own way, ignoring the advice of everyone else, and throwing fits when he failed, that's signs of some kind of mental disorder like autism or aspergers. Especially when you read further about people having issues coping with his behaviour, his disconnection from his family, and then shooting himself when his girlfriend walked out.

I have autism myself and I can relate to being determined to do things in a certain way and having irrational temper fits when they don't go my way. When I was in a religious cult and they tried moulding me into one of them the stress of not being allowed to be the person I wanted to be caused me to drink, smoke, and cut myself.

Autism and aspergers are disorders that we're only just starting to understand so it's no surprise that there's parts of the world where these aren't being addressed enough and people are struggling to cope with it. It's sad reading this harrowing testimony as so much could've been done to help ease this familys' pain, but not everyone recognises the symptoms of autism and aspergers.

[Jason Tandro]

Ok, geekgirl I have to ask. Forgive me if this seems a bit like prying but... are you a medical student or doctor or something? You seem to know a lot about this kinda stuff.

[geekgirl101]

No, I'm an autist myself. I had professors examining my behaviour when I was in infant school and when they ran out of ideas of why I was behaving the way I was and why I had such an artistic talent and intelligence (which has managed to degrade over the years) they sent me to special school for a few months for examination. They couldn't learn anything new from me so I got sent back to my normal school with bad consequences of me being bullied and me throwing regular tantrums from not being able to complete my work fast enough because I had fallen so far behind.

My parents were unaware at the time that I was autistic. They thought I was being stubborn and generally naughty. I recall my mother saying to me that I was more trouble than my sister and brothers put together. She had a really hard time raising me and trying to force me to submit and behave like everyone else. I noticed my general behaviour itself was also unacceptable, and after some confirmation from people who knew me in school and from family members it was then that we all realised I displayed all the symptoms of a child with autism. A bit more digging into my past had me recall that somewhere out there I have a half-brother who is autistic and my father had some kind of mental illness too.

Since then I've done a lot of research into autism to understand my condition more, and that's helped me accept the person that I am and why I behave so oddly at times. I discovered that autism is something that doctors are only just beginning to understand, along with aspergers syndrome, OCD and other similar mental health conditions, yet they're such common conditions almost as common as the flu. Quite a lot of people are actually on the autistic spectrum but are low enough to live normal lives that it's not that noticeable that they are slightly autistic. My husband is an example, he's low on the autistic scale but he's just high enough to be labelled as possibly autistic, and his own behaviour confirms that. He said it's why it makes him a good programmer since most programmers he's come across have all registered low on the autistic scale, and research also confirms that.

[Jason Tandro]

I have a very close friend who was diagnosed with Aspergers but i won't pretend to "understand" (I know that can be irritating to him, so we won't make a big deal out of it or anything like that.)

You like retro games, you're a board member, you're cool with us. . If you need somebody to talk to, were good.

[geekgirl101]

Thank you, and I hope my condition doesn't get in the way. Most the time you won't notice it, although I've had moments where I've blurted out something unacceptable and didn't rewrite it before someone read it and got upset by it. The only people who really notice it are people who play MMOs, you can't rewrite what you type in those.

But yeah, back to the topic it's a very sad story what that brother went through. Really makes me just want reach through my monitor to his end and give him a big hug.

[psychokind]

and i always thought the biggest difference between autists and normals is that the latter drink and smoke lol